Once he got the phone call, Rafael Huguet dashed down to the hatchery. The young pilot who spoke fluent English hadn’t seen the Americano in weeks, but could sense the urgency in Morgan’s voice. The last of the trucks had just left when Huguet showed up, leaving him and Morgan and a few others alone.
Cuban by birth, Huguet had spent much of his life in the United States, attending Georgia Tech and learning his life’s passion to fly airplanes. He had opposed the Batista regime ever since his father was beaten by government police during a routine traffic stop in Havana. On the last day of the revolution, Huguet had copiloted a plane laden with arms into Trinidad with bullets flying into the windows of the craft as it landed.
Out of earshot of the workers, Morgan ushered him past the croaking frogs and into a small room off the side of the main building. Before Huguet could say anything, Morgan walked across the room and opened a closet door. “I want you to see something,” he said.
Inside were stacks of machines guns, automatic rifles, grenades, and boxes of ammunition. Huguet stepped back for a moment, surprised. “William, what are you doing?” he said. “Are you crazy?”
Morgan shut the door. The weapons were there for a reason: He was heading to the mountains. It wasn’t just an idle threat anymore. It had started with hiding weapons near Banao for protection. Trucks had left the hatchery almost weekly. But it had escalated. Castro had crossed a line that the Second Front could not accept. He was inviting Soviet military advisers to the Escambray.
It wouldn’t be easy, but Morgan was prepared to train hundreds of men in the mountains, including the farmers who had become so angry with the government. “We have to do something about this guy,” he said.
The guerrillas had started to get help from the CIA, which had just dropped a cache of weapons from a plane into the foothills. Morgan didn’t want to deal with the agency, but if it was willing to supply weapons, so be it.
The Yanqui comandante was taking an enormous risk by moving weapons. “You are open to too many people,” Huguet said.
Morgan nodded, but he wasn’t going to be dissuaded. It was too late to worry about what Castro was going to do. His reason for calling Huguet was simple: He needed someone in Miami to help procure weapons from anti-Castro activists and if need be to fly them in under the cover of darkness to remote airstrips.
“Would you back me up?” Morgan asked. “Would you get arms for me?”
For Huguet, the timing was right. Once a passionate believer in the revolution, he had grown disillusioned with Castro and others like Che. He had come to admire Morgan over the past two years, not just for what he accomplished during the revolution but what he managed to do after.
Huguet nodded. “I will,” he said.
He would be in Miami in two more weeks and would call Morgan when he arrived. Then they could get started. He would have to make the critical contacts to begin raising arms. But the bigger challenge was whether he could deliver the weapons in time.
44
The car idled outside the National Institute for Agrarian Reform (NIAR). Morgan stepped out and grabbed the package on the seat. He had no desire to set foot in a government building, but he had to meet with Pedro Miret Prieto, the agriculture minister, who was getting married in a few days.
Morgan had distanced himself from most government leaders, but he tolerated Miret. Castro had appointed him a year earlier, and the minister had quietly approved of Morgan’s work at the hatchery, even allowing him to use government trucks.
Morgan handed Miret the package: a frog-skin wallet for him and a purse for his bride. Miret took the gifts and smiled, motioning for his visitor to sit, but Morgan didn’t have time. His men were waiting for him.
As Morgan turned to leave, several guards walked in the door and surrounded him. “Comandante Morgan,” said one, “we have to place you under arrest.”
Just then, a guard reached for Morgan’s sidearm, and the others grabbed his arms. Turning to the head guard, Morgan sternly demanded to know why he was being arrested. But the guard couldn’t answer. “We are taking you, Comandante, to the Technical Investigations offices,” he responded.
Morgan stayed calm. He allowed the guards to place him in handcuffs.
As he was being led down the hallways, the workers cleared out of the way and stared in disbelief as the Yanqui comandante was led out the door.
Olga ran out of the nursery and headed for the telephone. One of her bodyguards said a call had come from the National Institute for Agrarian Reform. It was Miret’s secretary: Morgan was attending an important meeting, but he wanted Olga to meet him at the office.
Olga paused. If Morgan was going to be late, he would call himself. “Why did he not call?” Olga asked.
The secretary repeated that Morgan was in a very important meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. But he wanted her to meet him there. Olga’s heart raced. She knew something was wrong. She hung up the phone and told Alejandrina to watch the babies. She and the escorts would be driving to the NIAR offices. Olga was hoping she was wrong, that perhaps Morgan was too busy to phone. But as she and the men rounded the corner, she saw the flashing lights and police officers standing around the building. But these weren’t just cop cars. These were Technical Investigations Department vehicles.
As they pulled up to the curb, one of Olga’s friends ran to the passenger side of the car, where Olga was sitting. “William is not here,” she said, out of breath. “They took him to the Technical Investigations Department.”
Then the police spotted Olga. Before they could reach the car, she ordered the driver back to the apartment. She didn’t care if he ran red lights the entire way. He had to step on it.
Olga wondered whether someone from Morgan’s entourage had betrayed him. The only one who wasn’t around was Manuel Cisneros Castro, one of Morgan’s bodyguards, who had left abruptly the night before to visit his gravely ill mother in Oriente Province. Cisneros had been with them since the Trujillo conspiracy, but to this day, no one trusted him—especially Olga.
Police cars had surrounded the penthouse. Olga ran to the door. She didn’t care what happened to her, but her children were inside. On the top floor, standing on the balcony, Ossorio looked down and saw that the building was surrounded. He grabbed a handful of grenades and a Thompson submachine gun and perched near the door, waiting.
“I was waiting to shoot them,” he recalled.
Olga walked past the police at the door and headed up the elevator. Policemen were waiting in the hallways between the elevator and the apartment. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“We’re going to conduct a search of your apartment,” one of them answered.
As they walked in together, she saw Ossorio. “No, Pedro, no,” she said. “I am with them. Don’t shoot.”
Ossorio could see that the police were walking too close to Olga for him to do anything.
“Throw down your gun,” one of the officers ordered. Ossorio stood with his gun pointing at the police. He refused to budge.
“Pedro, do as they say,” Olga said.
Ossorio tossed down his gun. The police surrounded and cuffed him. After they took him outside, Olga saw that some of the men were rifling through the cupboards and turning over the furniture. Upstairs, her infant daughter was wailing. “Stop now!” she screamed. “This is Commander Morgan’s home. You will get a search warrant. I want to see what legal right you have to search his house.”
The police captain came down the stairs and stopped his men. “Stand by outside,” he instructed them. “We will bring an order back.” The police didn’t need a legal order for most homes, but this one belonged to a comandante.
As soon as the door shut behind them, Olga ran upstairs. She closed her bedroom door and went to the closet where Morgan had stashed hand grenades and machine guns. One by one, she grabbed them and dropped them down the garb
age chute. Then she ran to the dresser and found the maps of the Escambray mountains. She tossed those down the chute, too.
In the nursery, Alejandrina, shaking, had crouched in a corner with Olguita.
“It’s OK, Alejandrina, it’s OK,” Olga said. “Nothing will happen to you.”
The police knocked on the front door. Olga opened it, and the captain flashed the order. As soon as he did, the entire squad crashed the penthouse, scurrying into the rooms, turning them upside down, pulling out drawers, knocking over lamps.
“We have to place you under arrest,” the captain said to Olga.
Even before the presidential debates ended, Loretta Morgan’s phone was ringing. The local news reported that the Castro government had arrested William Morgan, but there were few details. One radio newscast said that he had been taken into custody for helping insurgents in the mountains. Another said he was caught hiding guns.
The news broke just hours before the last of the televised Kennedy-Nixon debates, this one, from New York, including strong words about Cuba and the need to stop the spread of Communism in a nation so close to the United States.
Normally, Loretta would have been glued to the TV, watching the young Catholic senator in the final stages of the campaign. But she was a basket case. Every time the phone rang, another friend or church member was calling to ask if she had heard anything new.
Alexander Morgan slumped in a chair, staring at the flickering screen of the television. The broadcasts revealed nothing new, other than what the Cuban government had released in a press release earlier that day.
No matter what her son had told her, Loretta had worried that something like this might happen. The last time they spoke, Morgan talked about the hatchery and how he and Olga were trying to settle down and raise a family. But she knew what a challenge that would be for him. She had no idea what a Cuban jail was like, but it couldn’t be good. Her worst fears were coming true.
She went to bed that night with a rosary clutched in her hand, but she couldn’t sleep. She kept praying the same frantic, silent prayers over and over.
The next day, the newspaper that landed in their driveway announced: “Cuban Army Disclosed Arrest of Major Morgan, ex-Toledoan.” The Toledo Blade article mentioned that Jesús Carreras also had been arrested but, again, with few details. There was no information about a trial, nothing about specific charges, nothing about whether Loretta Morgan would ever see her son again.
45
She couldn’t use the phone. She couldn’t leave the apartment. She had little food in the cupboards and no money.
Olga had been under house arrest for a few days, but she hadn’t been allowed to retain a lawyer. For most of the day, she glared at the guards sitting across from her in the living room as she held Olguita in her arms. She couldn’t see her mother or father. She hadn’t seen her husband, nor would anyone tell her anything about the case against them. At night, she lay down and cried herself to sleep. Then the babies woke up, hungry and crying.
More than anything, it was the uncertainly of their future that most troubled her. She hadn’t been able to learn anything about Morgan’s whereabouts. At first, the guards said he was being held at Quinta Avenida, the G2 jail. Then it was La Cabaña. She looked for a way to send a message to neighbors on the balconies below, but the guards were watching her every move.
Finally, without warning, she walked directly in front of the men, reached for a telephone, and ripped it off the wall, pieces of plaster flying onto the floor. One of the guards came over to her, but she warned him to stay away. “I’m tired of this! I’m tired of all of you!” she screamed.
Either she was going to find a way to escape with her children, or the government would haul her to jail. If she stayed in her current situation, she wouldn’t make it.
The Second Front men gathered inside the small office in the Vedado neighborhood, encircling the desk. Menoyo sat at the center. No one had taken Morgan’s arrest harder than Menoyo. He had stayed up nights, trying to figure out a way to get him out of La Cabaña. Menoyo had never known anyone like the Americano. Of all the men in his unit, no one was more loyal or more willing to die for the others than Morgan. If Menoyo was in the same situation, Morgan would go to war for him.
Menoyo had two choices. He could rally the guajiros in the mountains who respected and supported Morgan and attack the prison. The men probably could overpower the first row of guards to get inside La Cabaña, but the government soldiers would no doubt blitz the fortress before the rebels could get out. It would be a suicide mission.
The second option was to work from the inside, which would be difficult, but not impossible. Not all the guards inside the prison were loyal to Castro. If the Second Front could reach key supporters in the anti-Castro movement, people with direct ties to the guards, they might find a way to help Morgan escape. Those supporters—members of the newly formed 30th of November Movement—were ready to help the Second Front. If Menoyo was going to get his friend out of jail, now was the time.
In the meantime, Menoyo had to make sure the Second Front continued to get weapons to the Escambray. They knew they were going to wage another military offensive—there was no other way to wrest control of the country. But they needed more firepower. They needed recruits. They needed Morgan.
Down the long brick corridor, Olga walked with the guards past the dank prison barracks. She had always been leery of La Cabaña: the brutal beatings of prisoners, the executions under Che Guevara, the rotting flesh along the wall. But when the guards came to her home with their orders, she didn’t have a choice. They were taking her to the prison for her arraignment.
Looming high on a hill on the eastern side of the harbor, La Cabaña was one of the most visible landmarks of Havana, a fortress built two hundred years earlier to keep out British invaders. Once a symbol of noble defiance, it was now a military prison known for the bullet-pocked walls outside where the inmates were executed.
As Olga was led into the tribunal chambers with the high ceilings and gallery, the guards and observers stood up. It was supposed to be a routine hearing where the judges read the charges and the prisoner made a plea. But as they read the counts against her—treason, bearing arms, conspiracy—Olga interrupted, each time blurting out “No.”
They would stop, wait, and then proceed, and each time, Olga would interrupt, “No, that did not happen.”
Irritated, the judges ordered her to sign the charges, but she refused. “You are going to do whatever you are going to do,” she said. “I’m not taking part.” One of the men became angry, telling Olga that she was only making it harder on herself. But she was defiant. “Whatever you have planned is already planned, and we can only wait for the results of all of this,” she said.
The guards then turned her around and walked her out of the hearing room. As they headed toward their car, Olga stopped dead in her tracks. “I want to see my husband,” she said. At first, the guards kept trying to move her along, but she refused to budge. She demanded to see the head of the prison.
The guards were going to have a scene on their hands. One of the men suggested that they take her to the superintendent’s office so Olga could hear the refusal for herself. As they neared the office, Olga looked over to the side where the visitors were gathering to meet with the inmates.
“Olga,” one of the visitors called out.
Olga recognized the visitor as a relative of Jesús Carreras and dashed toward the gate, the guards running after her. Before they could grab her, she found out that Morgan and others were being held in the chapel area adjacent to the main entrance. Her heart sank. That was the area for those in trouble and in some cases those who were waiting to be shot.
Without warning, Olga pushed away from the guards. Now there was utter chaos. Guards began running to the entrance, but before they could catch her, Olga had slipped into the superintendent’s office. The
surprised jailer looked up to see a woman standing in front of his desk.
“Where is my husband—William Morgan?” Olga demanded.
The guards rushed into the room, but the superintendent ordered them to back off. Everything was under control. After listening to Olga, he agreed to let her see Morgan briefly, but she had to follow the rules.
As they walked outside, she peered through one of the gates and spotted her husband. She barely recognized him. His cheeks were sallow, and his eyes were sunken in. She had never seen him so thin.
“Oh my God,” she said. “What did they do to you?”
She ran over and embraced him. Tears welled in her eyes as she clutched onto his prison fatigues. Morgan held onto her. “I’m all right, Olga,” he said. “Don’t worry.” He kissed her and whispered in her ear. “I love you,” he said.
It was like a dream. Olga didn’t want to let go. For a moment, they stared at each other, not saying a word. Morgan had just endured days of interrogation with the secret police, but they had gotten nowhere. When they asked him why he was moving weapons to the hills, he responded every time: “To protect myself.”
Later, after sending him back to his cell, one of the jailers served him contaminated food. For three days, he reeled in pain but managed to hold on. The prison itself had also made him sick. The combination of the rainwater seeping through the thick, porous concrete and the ocean wind turned the place cold at night.
Morgan could tell Olga was upset, but the time was running out on her visit. “Listen to me,” he whispered in her ear. “I can’t say a lot now, but we are working on something—an escape. I will get word to you when we get close, and we will be together again. I promise you.” He kissed her. “I will always be thinking about you. You are all I ever think about and will ever think about.”
The prisoners huddled in a circle on the stone floor, gathering close so that no one could invade their space. One of the men took out a chess board and plastic pieces and carefully began setting it up in the center. The fortress had become so crowded, there were few places the men could go. Each galería was crammed with two hundred prisoners—twice the intended capacity—most of them sleeping on the cold, damp floor.
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